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Dutch Design Week, which opened this weekend, is always chock full of forward-thinking design ideas on display. This year, design duo Scholten & Baijings are the event's ambassadors – a fitting choice as their prolific output of products has garnered them international attention for some years now.

Their design aesthetic is characterised by a distinctly subtle use of form, colour and materiality. This is achieved through an “atelier” way of working, explains Stefan Scholten, one half of the husband-and-wife team: “The way we work in our workshop is very special. We create new forms by working with paper models. We develop all our own materials and all our own colours.”

We round up five of their projects that exemplify their approach.

Porcelain perfection

The Dutch designers worked alongside 1616 Arita Japan, one of the oldest Japanese porcelain manufacturers, to create a collection of tableware that references the archives of the hand-painted porcelain company. See the collection here.

Cotton cabbage

During the 2010 Milan Furniture Fair the duo showcased inedible vegetables at Rossana Orlandi's gallery. The imitation vegetables, hand-sewn from fabric, looked deceptively real from a distance. It’s only up close that this fabric trompe l’oeil reveals its woven texture and stitching details. Read more here.

Marvellous marble

For Italian marble producer Luce di Carrara, Scholten & Baijings designed five unique marble tables. The collection, Solid Patterns, is inspired by the unique qualities of marble such as its various colourations, line patterns and finishes. See the collection here here.

Deconstructed materiality

With the Colour One project for MINI the pair explored the design of a MINI One by examining its composition down to the smallest detail and, in so doing, dissecting the design process and its materiality. Watch this video interview about the project here.

Fabric futures

More recently, Scholten & Baijings designed the Blocks and Grid fabric collection for Maharam, which reinterprets colour blocking as an exercise in subtle colour gradations. “The density of the grid determines how one experiences colour and gives the colour a more airy appearance than a monochromatic colour pane," says Scholten. Read more here.

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